Short Story - Tips to an aspiring writer:Start with your story.

I vaguely remember starting my first story with the below lines
"It was midnight on a new moon day. She was alone in the street."

I was probably twelve or thirteen then. I didn't like the opposites, night and day, coming in the same sentence. Apart from that, I was convinced that it is how my story should start. In

fact, I spent quiet a time trying to figure out the intelligent clues that the detective would have to eventually find. I don't know how far I proceeded. But suffice it to say, I don't remember

anything of the story but for the first line I penned in my notebook.

The mistake I made is, instead of finding a story I could tell, I started out with a story I wish I could tell.
Many of us do that mistake. City dweller writing about the pleasures of living in a village. Software engineer in Bangalore writing about the harsh life of the people in the fringe of the

society. Powered by their imagination, they do depict a true picture. But limited by their experience, they fail in producing a true insight.

At the other end of spectrum, many people positively believe that there is nothing in their life that is worth telling.
You should read Chetan Bhagat. He started his literary life with a story on college life in IIT. It was so successful that it spawned an even more successful movie! Now there is a

commercially viable genre called IIT/IIM/college campus story as can be seen in the slew of novels that have come out since chetan bhagat.

This is one reason why I don't like many of the exercises they give in the creative writing workshops or creative writing groups. They give a starting line of the story. Or they give a

situation or a theme and then to ask you to write about. It has its merits: It would get everyone started, it would give a homogeneous platform for comparison, contrasting and feedback.
But I always find it constraining and and invariably find tweaking the story that occupies my mind right then to the stated line or theme.

My tip to aspiring writer is: Let the story, at least the first few ones, be rooted in your experience.